Sunday, October 08, 2006

If it is a catastrophe, it must be biblical

Many areas of Greece have been hit with torrential rainfall over the past 24 hours, along with dropping temperatures and real fall-like weather. Unfortunately, due to Greece's geography, what with all the mountains and flood plains, many areas have been hit with flooding. This is a sad fact of life in Greece when the rains come in autumn, and lasts through the seasons into winter and part of spring. I suppose this is why the Greek word for summer is καλοκαίρι, which means good weather - thankfully, Greece is blessed with three months (or more) of generally rain-free weather.

Watching the dramatic news coverage of the flooding today I couldn't help but notice, for the ten thousandth time, that every catastrophe of such proportions is deemed by the Greek press as a "biblical" catastrophe. Doesn't matter where it occured - the earthquake in the Middle East? Biblical catastrophe. The tsunami? Biblical. Hurricane Katrina? Yep, biblical. The bombing of Lebanon? Oh yea, it's biblical. Plane crash? Oh wait, they didn't have planes in biblical times. Oops.

I am certainly not making light of what any of these people have gone through, although it seems the Greek media does by labelling everything a biblical catastrophe. Some things just happen. A confluence of science, nature, and bad luck come together and cause these events. Yes, they are catastrophic to the people who are affected. But they aren't wrath of God, Noah's flood type occurrences. In fact, I would say that in general, any area of Greece that is a flood plain (or an inhabited riverbed) that gets flooded is quite far from a biblical catastrophe. It is pretty much a man made catastrophe.

All that being said, I hope that Greece doesn't experience many catastrophes in the upcoming seasons, biblical or otherwise. That goes for the rest of the world, too.

2 comments:

That is a nice way to close this post. And you did show compassion for the ones experiencing the tragedies, no matter what they are called. Having never been to Greece, I can only imagine the old world thinking that is still part of the culture, to mix with the new. Must be interesting.